Whistleblowers are heroes.

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

Depends on the secret and why it's being revealed. It's one thing to blow the whistle on corrupt practices, malfeasance, nonfeasance and lawbreaking. It's quite another to reveal government secrets that serve to protect the people's safety against their enemies, foreign and domestic. It also matters how you go about blowing the whistle, and AFAIAC bulk release of government secrets without regard to some actual corrupt or illegal practice doesn't make the leaker a hero or a patriot, it makes him a traitor and a clear and present danger to national security.

Just because government keeps secrets from the hoi polloi doesn't mean that every such secret is a brick in the wall of tyranny.

There's some truth in this, in the sense that governments can be said to have national interests to protect. However, it is very much in the eye of the beholder. Many of us would not be dreadfully upset if some of the military and security apparatus secrets of, lets say, Russia, China and Iran were revealed, but might have a certain concern about our own countries' secrets being revealed.

And, even given a core of national interests secrets that a majority would concede should ideally be kept secret, I'm sure you would agree that it is the nature of any government to add more and more additional material to that core, under the spurious cover of "national interest"

Well, of course it's okay for us to penetrate and reveal the secrets of OTHER governments, but that's because they are the Evil Empire (tm) and our cause is just, and therefore we have the strength of ten...

But the issue here is not international espionage, it's traitorous behavior by those who enjoy the protection of the state who reveal secrets of the state that give aid and comfort to the enemy.

There are methods set up in US law for real "whistleblowers" to reveal classified information that points to corrupt or unlawful conduct by the government without revealing that information to the public. None of the so-called "whistleblowers" I believe are being referenced here took advantage of those avenues of redress, nor did they limit their public disclosures only to classified information pertinent to the detection, investigation and prosecution of criminal acts by government agents.

The recent mass "leaks" by Snowden and others were political dissent, not a valid or honest attempt to correct specific government wrongdoing. They were a generalized propaganda attack on the American system of government. And many of those revelations, which had nothing whatever to do with crimes committed by the government resulted in actual people actually being killed because their identities were blown. For that alone I'd happily stand on the firing squad for Snowden, Manning and Assange.

I'd have to ask BG how he would feel if every bit of his personal information including his home address, his photo, identity and locations of his kids and wife and his bank account numbers were "outed" on the Internet because some jackoff objected to his political stance or that he allegedly didn't pay a parking ticket?

There is a delicate balance between the legitimate need for government confidentiality and secrecy and the wrongs that occur when a government becomes opaque to public scrutiny, but dumping hundreds of thousands of classified documents into the Internet isn't a valid way of preserving that balance or respecting the rights of those who are harmed by doing so.

And if you want to talk about government transparency, the Obama administration just happens to the the most opaque administration in the history of the United States, which happens to be a classic hallmark of Marxism.

[Seth]

The secrets that are in the national interest are mostly temporary. There are large numbers of military secrets which are still stored in files labelled "top secret" 50 or more years after the need for such secrecy has disappeared.

My view is that anything that is so classified needs to be reviewed every 12 months by an independent group, and released if it is no longer necessary to keep it secret. Too many long term secrets are kept secret to preserve the corrupt practices of corrupt politicians.

Nor do I have any sympathy for a secret that hides the fact that diplomat A described foreign president B as a shithead. Diplomats need to keep such descriptions in between their ears, and not reveal them in any record that may be and should be made public.

I don't disagree with any of this. I think it's a net positive to call foreign shithead dictators what they are...right before we drop the hammer on them and put the people back in charge. FDR certainly didn't have a problem calling the Japs shitheads after Pearl Harbor. I think our politicians are far too wimpy and wishy-washy these days. I kind of miss Teddy Roosevelt's fire and Abraham Lincoln's oratorical skills. At least they said what they meant and meant what they said and didn't try to weasel out of it or apologize for it later. There's something to be said for certitude and confidence in a national leader. Worked pretty well for Hitler and Churchill too.

By the way, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is a complete shithead. Now where did I put that hammer?

[Blind groper]

I do not think opacity in government is a sign of Marxism, but it certainly is a sign of an unhealthy political system. The more transparent a government is, the less likely it will be corrupt.

As to whistleblowers releasing American government data, they should not have the chance to cause harm, because the government is already releasing data. Secrecy in government makes me suspect corruption.

[Tyrannical]

What Snowden should have done is leak his information to sympathetic members of Congress such as Rand or Ron Paul, both of whom stood up for what Snowden did. That would have been at least mostly legal, or at least near impossible to prosecute for.

[Seth]

I do not think opacity in government is a sign of Marxism, but it certainly is a sign of an unhealthy political system. The more transparent a government is, the less likely it will be corrupt.

I didn't say it was a sign of Marxism, I said it was a hallmark of Marxism. Government opacity is hardly restricted to Marxism, but it always exists under Marxism.

As to whistleblowers releasing American government data, they should not have the chance to cause harm, because the government is already releasing data. Secrecy in government makes me suspect corruption.

Then you won't mind publishing your credit card and bank account number here I presume, because I suspect you of corruption because you don't.

[Blind groper]

Seth

I would not care if you posted my bank account number, since that cannot be used. My credit card number is another matter, since a thief can use that to take money off me.

Not a comparison to government secrets, which are mainly used to disguise corruption. An honest politician (is there such a beast?) would not fear transparency. Secrets simply cover up corruption. All nations would be better off without such cover ups.

[Tyrannical]

Seth

I would not care if you posted my bank account number, since that cannot be used.

You're naive to think such a thing.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7914159/ns/te ... pBwuyf4JsA

"The fact that a stranger can pull money out of a person's bank account using only the numbers at the bottom of his or her check is not commonly understood," the group wrote to the Fed, commenting on the proposed rules change. "Complaints about unauthorized bank debits are believed to be grossly underreported, perhaps because of the lack of public awareness of this type of bank account vulnerability."

[Blind groper]

To Tyrannical

Beside the point since comparing an individual's bank security to a corrupt politician covering up his corruption is not a valid comparison.

[Seth]

Seth

I would not care if you posted my bank account number, since that cannot be used. My credit card number is another matter, since a thief can use that to take money off me.

Not a comparison to government secrets, which are mainly used to disguise corruption. An honest politician (is there such a beast?) would not fear transparency. Secrets simply cover up corruption. All nations would be better off without such cover ups.

Then go ahead and post them yourself...or are you lying?

And the public has no need to know what the security systems in place at Fort Knox or the Pentagon are, now do they?

[Seth]

To Tyrannical

Beside the point since comparing an individual's bank security to a corrupt politician covering up his corruption is not a valid comparison.

True, but then again that's not what he or I is comparing anything to. We're comparing your idiotic notion that governments do not need to keep secrets and that government keeping secrets is axiomatically a sign of corruption.

Neither is true. There are plenty of secrets that governments need to keep in order to do their job properly that have nothing whatever to do with corruption.

And that's the point of the comparison.

You might want to go back and read some of your posts where you tout moderation over extremism, it might give you some insights as to why your arguments here are so abysmally stupid and ignorant.

[Audley Strange]

Audley

That may be correct, but it is a lot easier for a government to become totalitarian if it is able to cover up its nefarious activities. Revealing what it is up to, makes the change to a totalitarian system a lot less likely.

Granted.

Then again just because something might potentially make it easier for a government to become totalitarian doesn't mean it will inevitably become totalitarian or that there are not other perfectly reasonable and rational justifications for keeping secrets.

Also granted. Individual historical precedents are not mandatory.

[Blind groper]

To Seth

If you go back to my original post, you will note that I made allowance for a few secrets, such as military secrets. But only a few. Obviously I am not suggesting that Fort Knox should publish its security set up. However, there is no reason to keep secret the fact that politician A or diplomat B is incompetent and cannot keep his mouth shut.

Whistleblowers are seriously unlikely to release vital security data. But are very likely to reveal government bullshit. Thus, they are heroes.

[Seth]

To Seth

If you go back to my original post, you will note that I made allowance for a few secrets, such as military secrets. But only a few. Obviously I am not suggesting that Fort Knox should publish its security set up. However, there is no reason to keep secret the fact that politician A or diplomat B is incompetent and cannot keep his mouth shut.

Whistleblowers are seriously unlikely to release vital security data. But are very likely to reveal government bullshit. Thus, they are heroes.

Well, except for all those "whistleblowers" like Assange, Manning, Snowden, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg et al.

One must rationally distinguish between a "whistleblower" and a traitor based on what is stolen, what is revealed, who it is revealed to, how it is revealed, and what the actual effect of such revelations are.

[Blind groper]

Traitors normally do not post their intelligence on the internet for all to see.

A traitor normally has material gain in mind. Meaning he/she will sell the data to an agency with an agenda.

[Jason]

A 'traitor' probably has their own survival in mind first.

If I was a traitor, I'd seed my 'intelligence' in plainsight around teh interwebz and have numerous 'dead man' switches in place to coallate it and release it in the event that the undesirable occured. It would be pretty spiffing easy even if the traitor was under surveillance.

After that > Profit!

Profit and pretty fucked.. not much more to do after that. No one will ever let you near sensitive information again. Even sympathizers. Snowden is a living martyr.